i got a gateway computer (bad, bad idea..) and it came with an "ATI Radion HD 4650" with 1GB of VRAM, an AMD Phenom quad 9750, 8GB of DDR2 RAM, yet after effects won't let me use my card to render in opengl, i have the latest opengl drivers, and the latest drivers gateway has published (the normal drivers can't finish installing because of something im sure gateway is behind), on PS it wouldnt allow it either, but i did the registry hack, and it runs fine on there now, but i kinda want it for after effects so i can do a faster render than 10 minutes for 10 seconds of preview

but i kinda want it for after effects so i can do a faster render than 10 minutes for 10 seconds of preview

That's nonsense. AE uses OpenGL very sparsely and it probably won't won't accelerate your previews, especially if plug-ins are involved that do not use OpenGL or where it is disabled for a million reasons like combinations of MP rendering, temporal effects or too many OpenGL effects that exceed your card's capabilities. Sorry to shatter any illusiosn, but whatever is causing your long waits is not what measly infdluence your graphics card would have... In any case, if you cannot install the original ATI drivers, I don't think anyone can really advisxe anything else. That in itself is already a huge problem...

Nothing but base plugins that i checked to be openGL accelerated, and somehow it is working now, dunno what happened,

i dont use multi-frame rendering, it's hardly any effects (only about 1-2 per clip, 2 clips like this) and 2 other comps that are referenced 30 times, but it should be a one-time render, then just composites, right?

and i know it should take a while to render at full resolution (was recorded in 1080p at 100FPS) but i render at quarter for previews, and looking at other people's problems, when you get a pre-built computer, the hardware tends to require special drivers

For After Effects, don't sweat Open GL. You're not missing a SINGLE THING by not being able to use it. Fast processors and boatloads of memory make AE go fast, not Open GL. In fact, Open GL screws up rendering in AE most of the time.

Adobe employees don't use Open GL when they render, and neither should you....

...and if you might thing that's a false statement, bear in mind this is an Adobe forum watched closely by Adobe employees. If I'm wrong, they'll come down on me like a ton of bricks.

Sure, AE will only read the frame from the source file once, but if the comp is used 30 times, 30 individual comp buffers need to be calculated, possibly involving complex blending operations with other layers or the footage itself if used as nested comp. Furthermore, since you mention 100fps, there may be temporal operations involved when time-stretching/ time-remapping, resulting in look-up of multiple source frames per any single comp frame which for all intents and purposes can take a while, especially with compressed sources that require to decode larger parts since they are GOP based. Could be perfectly normal, if you ask me, but there may be room to improve performance by checking your comps and optimizing things here and there.